Church Of The Beheading Of St John The Baptist

Parish church. Twelfth century, extended south around 1200 and in the fifteenth century, restored 1873 to 1874 and 1907 to 1908. Flint with timber-framed and weatherboarded tower and plain tiled roofs. The building comprises a nave and south aisle, chancel and south chapel, west tower and south porch.

The west tower rises from a flint base with two early twentieth-century weatherboarded upper stages, battlemented, with gothic traceried lights. The south porch is buttressed with a plain chamfered doorway. Windows include fifteenth-century Perpendicular tracery and fourteenth-century "Y" tracery in the nave and aisle, three lancets in the south chapel south wall, and two large eastern lancets. The chancel east wall has three small lancets with one above. The nave north wall retains a blocked north door with repaired brick buttressing. Exposed tufa quoins and blocked arches in the chancel north wall possibly indicate a lost chapel and tower.

Interior: At the west end of the nave stands a blocked chamfered west doorway, west window, and part-blocked rere-arch of a twelfth-century window. A three-bay arcade with chamfered arches on square piers supports the roof. Crown-post roofs span the nave and aisle. The chancel arch features a drip mould arch over moulded square imposts with attached clustered shafts, rings and acanthus crockets; the right-hand pier contains squints to the chancel and south chapel. An arch from the south aisle to the south chapel is a simple chamfered arch on square imposts. The chancel contains a two-bay arcade to the chapel, slightly chamfered on round piers with square moulded abaci. Round-headed rere-arches frame the chancel east windows. A fifteenth-century rere-arch to the north-west chancel window extends to floor level, blocking an earlier lancet to enclose a stone reading desk and aumbry, perhaps a confessional. In the south chapel, lancet reveals display drips and double moulded surrounds with attached shafts, carried on a string course. The south-east respond extends to floor level to enclose a doorway.

Fittings include a round-headed piscina and cusped aumbry in the chancel, a fifteenth-century bench with half-poppy heads used as sedilia, and a fifteenth-century screen to the chapel of twenty-two lights with the end coved to form a canopy over the sedilia. A fifteenth-century wooden reading desk with poppy heads is present. The pulpit is octagonal and Jacobean. The font is fifteenth-century octagonal with a seventeenth-century wood cone cover. Box pews survive in the nave and south chapel, with raised and fielded panelling. Wall paintings in the chancel on lancet responds depict large thirteenth-century figures. Fragmentary thirteenth-century glass remains.

Monuments include medieval slabs on the chapel floor incised with Latin crosses, one with a brass inscription to Francis Bourne, died 1615. A white marble wall monument to George Swift, died 1732, features grooved Doric pilasters, cornice with enriched frieze and broken pediment clasping a vase. A small black plaque on the wall behind the pulpit commemorates John Adye, died 1612, with scrolled base, cornice and achievement. A chest tomb dated 1756 in stone with marble top contains raised rectangular panels with chamfered corners and rectangular vases at the corners on a double plinth, inscribed to Edward Bentham, died 1756.